In recent years, customers told Pepsi that they weren’t interested in drinking diet colas because of their concerns about the sweetener aspartame. Pepsi took the logical next step and changed out the sweetener in Diet Pepsi to a blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium to prop up diet cola sales, and in response to the change, sales…. fell even faster. Now Pepsi has canceled a planned meeting with bottlers to discuss solutions to the crisis. [More]

In response to falling sales of diet soda, last year PepsiCo changed the sweetener in its main calorie-free beverage, Diet Pepsi. Noting the health concerns that some customers have about the original sweetener in Diet Pepsi, aspartame, the company switched to a different sweetener last year to try to reverse a sales decline. Now sales are declining even faster. [More]

There’s a widely held belief among fitness and health experts that people who truly want to lose weight and keep it off should replace diet sodas and other artificially sweetened beverages with nature’s no-calorie drink: water. You know who stands to lose a lot of money from people believing that? The same industry that funded a new study that concluded that diet drinks are better for weight loss than water. [More]

As recently as last summer, Pepsi was called out (by the Center for Environmental Health) for continuing to use a controversial caramel coloring — one that can contain a possible carcinogen and is included under hazard label regulation in California — in spite of calls for an end to its use. New tests from our coworkers at Consumer Reports confirm that Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Pepsi One all contain significant levels of the ingredient. [More]

Diet Pepsi has switched up its sweetener but it’s doing it ever so quietly and carefully, so as not to freak everyone out. The goal is to make sure that the soda will taste the way it’s supposed to for a longer time, but because the public in general hate change, the company isn’t going around trumpeting this new formula. [More]

You know what they say — if you don’t change, you die. Despite the positives of forward momentum, we’re willing to bet diehard Diet Pepsi drinkers might be a bit upset to know that the soda is changing up its sweetener. PepsiCo swears the taste will remain the same as the one aspartame brings to the game (had to do it), but now the soda will last longer on the shelf.

(Ed. note— Ok, let me just tell you that reading this story made my stomach flip, which is something that almost never happens to me, so if you’re eating lunch or (heaven forbid) drinking a Pepsi — just go to Cute Overload and forget this ever happened.) A Florida man says he was drinking a can of Diet Pepsi when he noted that it tasted funny. (Warning: “Not Safe For Lunch” graphic picture inside.)

A new study on the effects of low daily doses of the artificial sweetener aspartame shows a statistically significant increase in leukemia, lymphoma and breast cancer in rats. Consumer advocates are calling for the FDA to take another look at the safety of aspartame in light of the study, but the FDA seems uninterested.